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Betrayal and Good Intentions
(2 Essays on QA and Year)
Scratch Outline for “Themes of Betrayal Found in The Quiet American and The Year of Living Dangerously”
The usage of the theme differs slightly however, as in The Quiet American betrayal is used to show how far Pyle and Fowler are willing to go in order to win the affection of Phuong, and in The Year of Living Dangerously it is used to show how perceived betrayal by Guy Hamilton and President Sukarno leads to the downfall of Billy Kwan.
The main plot of The Quiet American is driven by the love triangle between Fowler, Pyle and Phuong, and it is through this we see how the characters become desperate and resort to betrayal as a means to get what they desire.
The Year of Living Dangerously, alternatively, uses betrayal as a destructive tool to highlight the downfall of the character of Billy Kwan, whose feelings of betrayal and disappointment by the two men he idealized at the start of the novel, Guy Hamilton and President Sukarno, wind up leading to his death.
Themes of Betrayal Found in The Quiet American
and The Year of Living Dangerously
by Niall Seiler
Betrayal is often an important literary theme used by authors to show to what lengths characters can go to in order to achieve what they desire. When employed in literary works, betrayal can also be an important tool to highlight characteristics of other characters, by showing how they perceive and react to the other character’s treachery. These themes are evident in the novels The Quiet American, and The Year of Living Dangerously, which both use the theme of betrayal to drive the plot forward and is key to revealing character motivations. The usage of the theme differs slightly however, as in The Quiet American betrayal is used to show how far Pyle and Fowler are willing to go in order to win the affection of Phuong, and in The Year of Living Dangerously it is used to show how perceived betrayal by Guy Hamilton and President Sukarno leads to the downfall of Billy Kwan.
The main plot of The Quiet American is driven by the love triangle between Fowler, Pyle and Phuong, and it is through this we see how the characters become desperate and resort to betrayal as a means to get what they desire. As a younger man, Pyle believes he can give Phuong what she wants and needs in the form of marriage and children. Fowler on the other hand believes Pyle too naïve to really understand what she needs and believes he himself is best for her. Although a friendship of sorts exists between the two, Pyle proposes marriage to Phuong and attempts to lure her away from Fowler, the first instance of betrayal between the two. His lack of consideration for their relationship leads to Fowler’s own duplicitous behaviour. Speaking of how “you shouldn’t trust anyone when there’s a woman in the case” (Greene 141), Fowler’s insecurities lead him to lie to Pyle multiple times regarding his relationship with Phuong as well as his wife, whom he wishes to divorce in order to marry Phuong. Fowler’s feelings towards Pyle become further conflicted after Pyle saves his life while escaping from a war zone and being attacked by the Viet Minh. Despite this utmost display of loyalty, Fowler takes part in the orchestration of Pyle’s death, both as a result of his relationship with Phuong as well as Pyle’s suspected role in the detonation of a car bomb in which innocent civilians were killed. On the eve of Pyle’s death Fowler is wracked over the guilt of whether to send Pyle to his death or not yet ultimately decides to betray him anyway, the allure of Phuong and his disgust over Pyle’s actions being too strong.
The Year of Living Dangerously, alternatively, uses betrayal as a destructive tool to highlight the downfall of the character of Billy Kwan, whose feelings of betrayal and disappointment by the two men he idealized at the start of the novel, Guy Hamilton and President Sukarno, wind up leading to his death. When he first arrives in Indonesia, Hamilton becomes connected with Billy Kwan, who takes a liking to Hamilton and becomes his personal cameraman, ultimately increasing his journalistic reputation in the area by securing him high profile political interviews through his connections. Through these connections he is introduced to Jill Bryant, a young diplomat at the British Embassy, whom Billy claims to love and has proposed to, but ultimately supports and encourages Guy when a relationship blossoms between him and Jill. Guy frequently sabotages and endangers the relationship, however, as he attempts to investigate sensitive information given to him by Jill, and becomes smitten with Vera, a Russian agent intent on seducing him for information. Billy regards this as a betrayal of his trust, as he approved of the relationship between Guy and Jill and feels Guy is threatening not just the relationship but their friendship as well. His thoughts are revealed through the intimate files he keeps on all the characters, speaking of how Guy has become “capable of betrayal,” (Koch 251) and how he has become “inconstant, when [he] had thought constancy was [Guy’s] chief virtue” (Koch 257). This is juxtaposed with Billy’s idealization of President Sukarno, whom Billy initially believes to be the saviour of the Indonesian people but comes to realize he cares little about them as a result of caring for Ibu, a poor woman whose son Udin eventually dies even after Billy attempts to support the family. Seeing how they and many others are living in poverty despite Sukarno’s claims of prosperity causes Billy to become disillusioned. This feeling of betrayal by Sukarno to his own people and Billy himself coincides with his feelings of betrayal by Guy, and results in him boldly attempting to confront Sukarno at a hotel, an altercation that results in his death.
By the end of both novels, the characters have been shaped and changed as a result of feelings of betrayal and disloyal actions by those around them. We see how the characters of Fowler and Pyle in The Quiet American become increasingly erratic and intense when it comes to winning Phuong’s affections, as evidenced through Fowler’s lies and Pyle’s courting Phuong away from Fowler right in front of him. This ultimately culminates in the death of Pyle as orchestrated in part by Fowler, an action for which he feels only slightly guilty. This is juxtaposed with Billy’s own feelings of betrayal in The Year of Living Dangerously, in which betrayal by the two men he admired most leads him to recklessly endanger his own life by confronting Sukarno at the hotel, an action that leads to his demise. Through the theme of betrayal, both authors highlight important character desires as well as the lengths they will go to see those desires through.
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Good Intentions
Scratch Outline for “The Conundrum of the Good Intentioned Imperialist”
Authors Koch and Greene both explore through their novels the ways that expats from imperialist countries fail to help or understand the people of the countries they invade, even if their intentions are to do so.
Both novels show how an imperialistic mindset values ideas over the tangible, which often overlooks and creates real consequences for the people of the country.
Along with their ideas, expats’ status insulates them from the difficult realities around them, which encourages complacency.
The cultural gulf between expats and the local people inhibit their ability to relate to or understand each other—even if they want to.
The Conundrum of the Good Intentioned Imperialist
by Ian MacDonald
When we think of postcolonial imperialism, we often think of power-hungry oppressors out to dominate, control, and profit from less powerful countries. While this is a largely accurate depiction, there are also individuals working with the intention of improving conditions in the countries they visit but encounter great difficulty in doing so. Both The Quiet American, and The Year of Living Dangerously center around such characters whose efforts are inhibited by barriers in culture, class, and ideas, often resulting in failure or disillusionment. Authors Koch and Greene both explore through their novels the ways that expats from imperialist countries fail to help or understand the people of the countries they invade, even if their intentions are to do so.
Both novels show how an imperialistic mindset values ideas over the tangible, which often overlooks and creates real consequences for the people of the country. In A Quiet American, We see this most clearly in Pyle, who Fowler says “was determined . . . to do good, not to any individual person but to a country, a continent, a world.” Fowler, a noninterventionist, criticizes Pyle’s “mental concepts”, and challenges his claim that the Vietnamese “don’t want communism” because they “won’t be allowed to think for themselves”. He argues instead for the tangible: “They want rice . . . They don’t want to be shot at . . .They don’t want our white skins around telling them what they want”. However, when the watch tower guards are attacked by solders pursuing him, he feels he’s failed in his efforts to stay uninvolved, thinking, “those wounds had been inflicted by me just as though I had used the sten”. Fowler is emotionally affected by the real death around him, but Pyle shows indifference, like when the bombing he enabled kills innocent people and he’s preoccupied by blood on his shoes. Pyle feels justified in his actions because “they died for democracy”, where Fowler, horrified, kills Pyle to prevent further innocent death. In The Year of Living Dangerously, Billy and Hamilton also have an intellectual discussion about how to help the local people. Hamilton like Fowler takes a passivist approach deciding that “[poverty is] a bottomless pit, and that even if he gave away his whole fortune he’d solve nothing.” Billy tries to reconcile his love for ideas and for the people by applying the Christian philosophy “you don’t think about the so-called big issues, or changing the system, but you deal with whatever misery is in front of you”. He fails however to ignore the “big issues” as we see in his attempts to play Hamilton and others “like cards” and in how enchanted he is by Sukarno’s rhetoric. When reality inevitably betrays his romanticism, it leads to disillusionment and arguably his demise; as Condon says, “Billy had these standards he wanted everyone to live up to. They were impossible, of course, and then he got angry.”
Along with their ideas, expats’ status insulates them from the difficult realities around them, which encourages complacency. They live and socialize with each other in posh, secure areas, usually only interacting with locals as servers, employee’s or betjak/trishaw drivers. They’re well protected from the war or civil unrest around them, never needing to participate or endure more than they want to; as Fowler says, “[w]ith a return ticket courage becomes an intellectual exercise, like a monk’s flagellation. How much can I stick? Those poor devils can’t catch a plane home.” This safety from war also protects their conscience and innocence—as Trouin tells Fowler after bombing a sampan: “We are fighting all of your wars, but you leave us the guilt.” As a result, the expats often fail to empathize with locals beyond a conceptual level. As Billy points out to Hamilton while sharing his photography, “Those pictures up there tell a story about the people here that you don’t tell in your reports — that no one’s telling[.] Who really cares about those people — bathing in sewage, scrounging for rice and a few pieces of vegetables and meat, for one meal a day?”. Kumar expounds a similar sentiment when he tells Hamilton, “you people do not care about us, you only pretend to”
The cultural gulf between expats and the local people inhibit their ability to relate to or understand each other—even if they want to. Fowler experiences this in his relationship with Phoung. After espousing theories about her nature, he admits to himself that he’s merely “inventing a character”. He recalls early in their relationship, trying “passionately to understand her”, only to be met with “silences”, and later thinks “I wanted to read her thoughts, but they were hidden away in a language I couldn’t speak.” Hamilton does begin to cross the cultural divide when he goes “beyond the reach of any sort of aid” to cover the Long March and his car is overtaken by a mob causing him to fear for his life for the first time. After escaping, he watches the local wayang with “mysterious pleasure, but without comprehension” and relates it to reading comic books as a child—which helps him see the surrounding “still brown faces with an affectionate compassion which was new to him”. For a moment he’s able to connect more deeply with Indonesian culture, but it lasts only until he leaves to find Vera—retreating back into the safety of his own life. Billy tries to connect with the Indonesian people through saving Ibu, and although he does help her, he is unable to save her daughter because he “can’t make her understand that the canal in which she and the girl bathe is infected.”
Each of the main characters has a genuine desire to improve the living conditions of the local people around them: Pyle blindly follows his ideologies with an “ends justifies the means” mentality, Fowler ignores politics but kills Pyle to prevent tangible suffering, Hamilton risks his safety for his reporting, and Billy attempts to combine his romantic ideas with everyday action. As we watch each of the stories play out through intellectual arguments and through action and consequence, we become aware of the paradoxical relationship between ideas and reality in politics and war. Through exploring these paradoxes, Greene and Koch both show that good intentions do not always garner positive results, and that while Imperialist countries such as our own may intellectually desire to help the countries we invade, the barriers of cultural understanding, the bias of our own ideas, our position of power, and our inevitable self-interest will always be problematic to our honorable intentions.